Why the Somme The French Army was bigger than the British Army and as the war was being fought in France the British usually did as the French wanted. General Haig therefore planned an attack where the French wanted it – the Somme

Preparing the attack April 1916 General Haig gathered nearly 700,000 men for the attack. Many of these soldiers were new to the Army. They were keen but had little experience of battle.

Soldier Rehearsals April –May 1916 The inexperienced soldiers were given rehearsals to show them what to do. Huge areas of ground were lined with ribbons to shoe imaginary trenches. Then the soldiers were sent to capture the ribboned areas. They were told to imagine that there was barbed wire in the way. Officers held up flags to show imaginary shells exploding. The rehearsals were done in silence.

A Change of plan February 1916 Haig had to change his plans when the Germans attacked the city of Verdun. The French commander sent many of his men to defend Verdun. Instead of sharing an attack the British would have to do most of the fighting. Additionally the French commander wanted the British attack to begin as soon as possible in order to take the German forces away from Verdun. Haig had to agree to attack a month earlier than planned in July.

June 23 rd -July 1 st British guns had fired over one and a half million shells at the German trenches. They had two targets, one a the barbed wire in front of the trenches, the other was the trenches themselves. Their aim was to cut up the barbed wire, smash the trenches and kill their defenders.

7.30am July 1 st 1916 The guns stopped firing. More than British soldiers climbed out of their trenches in a line of 25 kilometres long. In the bright sunshine of a perfect summer morning, they started walking towards the Germans. Many of the soldiers expected an easy victory. One officer told his men, ‘you will not need rifles, you will find the Germans all dead, not even a rat will have survived.’

The Germans come out of hiding As the men left their trenches bravely they were shot down by gunfire, wave after wave of soldier was mown down by machine gunfire or blown to bits by shell fire. The Germans had been hiding, for weeks before the attack their air force had been watching the British soldiers moving up to the front line. When the guns started firing the Germans simply went into their shelters and waited for the guns to stop. They then simply set up their machine guns and hardly had to aim at all.

Nightfall on the 1 st July By the end of the day 60,000 British soldiers were dead or wounded. It was the greatest loss in a single day ever suffered by a British Army.

Nightfall 1 st July 1916 The Germans lost 8000 men.

2 nd July onwards The Battle was not halted for casualties, day after day British soldiers went ‘over- the-top’ to attack Germans trenches. However the German army had orders not to give a single inch of ground.

Autumn The longer the fighting went on the worse the conditions became, Shellfire churned up the land into a sea of mud. When the Autumn came the mud dissolved into slime, metres deep in places.

November at Beaumont Hamel. In November, the British made a last great attack. This time it worked, the captured the village of Beaumont Hamel and too thousands of Germans prisoner. At last they had made the breakthrough that Haig wanted. Then it started to snow. The battlefields were already deep in mud. Now it was swept with icy winds and blizzards. Neither side could move. General Haig had no choice but to call off the battle.